ECONOMIZING PRECIPITATION. 
449 
and, at the same time, more efficient. He proposes the con¬ 
struction of relatively small filtering receptacles, into which he 
would conduct the rain falling upon a large area of rocky 
hillside, or other sloping ground, not readily absorbing water. 
This process would, in all probability, be a very successful, as 
well as an inexpensive, mode of economizing atmospheric pre¬ 
cipitation, and compelling the rain and snow to form perennial 
fountains at will. 
Economizing Precipitation. 
The methods suggested by Palissy and by Babinet are of 
limited application, and designed only to supply a sufficient 
quantity of water for the domestic use of small villages or large 
private establishments. Dumas has proposed a much more 
extensive system for collecting and retaining the whole precip¬ 
itation in considerable valleys, and storing it in reservoirs, 
whence it is to be drawn for household and mechanical pur¬ 
poses, for irrigation, and, in short, for all the uses to which the 
water of natural springs and brooks is applicable. His plan 
consists in draining both surface and subsoil, by means of con¬ 
duits differing in construction according to local circumstances, 
but in the main not unlike those employed in improved agri¬ 
culture, collecting the water in a central channel, seeming its 
proper filterage, checking its too rapid flow by barriers at con¬ 
venient points, and finally receiving the whole in spacious 
covered reservoirs, from which it may be discharged in a con¬ 
stant flow or at intervals as convenience may dictate.* 
There is no reasonable doubt that a very wide employment 
of these various contrivances for economizing and supplying 
water is practicable, and the expediency of resorting to them 
is almost purely an economical question. There appears to be 
no serious reason to apprehend collateral evils from them, and 
in fact all of them, except artesian wells, are simply indirect 
methods of returning to the original arrangements of nature, 
or, in other words, of restoring the fluid circulation of the 
* M. G. Dumas, La Science des Fontaines , 1857. 
29 
